THE VERMONT LODGE OF RESEARCH #10

ESOTERIC SYMBOLISM OF THE 15 DEGREETH

KNIGHT OF THE EAST A.A.S.R.

WHO WAS DANIEL?

Daniel played a central character in the 15 degree. He was the wise old man ofth

the Jews in captivity who interpreted the dreams of King Cyrus. But he was much more

than that.

In a previous lecture, we discussed the seven levels of initiation in the Mithras

mysteries. The first four lower levels-raven-occult-warrior and lion, liken to the Lesser

mysteries of the Greek Eleusinian rites. The three higher levels-Persian-Sun hero and Father

liken to the Greater mysteries of the Greek Eleusinian rites. In fact, the three higher levels

actually create, implement and guide the evolution and spiritual development of a particular

nation or culture. For example, the Father of a culture bears within his etheric body the

actual folk spirit archangel of the nation. In the case of Moses, he bore the spirit of the

archangel Michael within him. With this spirits help, Moses could see the divine plan of the

culture and created laws and customs to guide the culture in its development. As law giver,

the Father also bore the karma of the sins of the nation.

Daniel was a fifth level so-called Persian. But this is the name of a title, a generic

name only. If one was working within the Persian nation, he was called a Persian, if within

the Greek nation, he was called a Greek. When Jesus meets Nathaniel, He saith of him:

“ Behold an Israelite indeed in whom there is no guile!” So Daniel was an Israelite. He was

inspired by the Jewish folk-soul Elijah. The folk soul of a nation inspires oracle-dreams in

the sleep. He creates the myths and fables within the culture.

As an Israelite, Daniel experience the sufferings of his people. In the 15 degree Danielth

says,

“ their sorrows are mine....I have learned that we are brethren, that the sorrows and

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shame, the affliction and despair of one, are the concern of all, and in my person,

chained and clothed as I am, I stand with them and for them and plead the cause of

all...let us depart to the land from which our fathers were taken.”

When Daniel addressed the spiritual world, he did so, not for himself, but as

representative of his people. This is the unselfish characteristic of an Israelite. A personal

petition can only go so far as an angel. A petition for the nation as a karmic group goes to the

archangel, which in this case was Michael and Michael, answered his petitions in a grand and

majestic way.

In his dreams, Daniel reached a higher level of communion than normal with the folk-

soul. Daniel was a wise man with unusual prophetic powers, he saw the future of his folk in

his dreams. To achieve this, an arrangement was made wherein he could read the mysteries

of the cosmic karma revealed thru the Akashic record. A higher level initiate could see the

pictures of the Akashic record during the waking state of clear consciousness. For Daniel, he

could only see the pictures during his sleep. With the help of the folk-spirit, Michael, Daniel

was shown the pictures of the work of the Archons, the angelic hierarchy immediately above

the level of archangels. The Archai are spirits of the cycles of time. Each Archon rules for an

epoch of 2160 years and the record of this time is preserved in the Akashic chronicle. The

cumulative record of each epoch is held in the memory of the next higher level of angels, the

Elohim, of whom Jehovah was a member as well the guiding folk- spirit of the Jewish nation.

Daniel asked that he could see the future of his people. This future of Israel was shown

to him as well the destiny and karma of the Jewish nation. These pictures were presented to

him by an Elohim being of the host of Jehovah (see: the man by the Tigris river clothed in

linen.) But he could only see the pictures. Spirits from the lower hierarchies, angels and

archangels, (see: Gabriel and Michael) had to communicate the meaning of the pictures to

him. For this reason is easy to see why Daniel was unmatched in the realm for interpreting the

dreams of Kings. He had been instructed by the great beings of the angelic hierarchies to

understand the meaning of the pictures from the Akashic record. As such, there was no greater

prophet of the future and of the three kingdoms of evil in the Old Testament. Only the

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prophecies of St, John in the Apocalypse are comparable.

WHY THE CAPTIVITY?

In occultism there is the wonderful spiritual process called occultation. In the religion

of Islam, there is a reign of Imams beginning with the prophet and ending with the last,

wherein the end of the age is ushered in with splendor and happiness. Whether you believe

there are 12 or 7 imams in succession, for both Sunni and Shiite Islam, the last imam has not

yet appeared. He is in occultation, waiting to incarnate.

In occultation, there is emptiness, darkness and no time. It is an abyss into which one

is thrown and must ascend out of. In the conditions of consciousness, before one can ascend

to higher levels of consciousness, that of manas, buddhi and atma, one must experience the

abyss after one level is completed and another level is ascended. The reason for this process

is simple. The level completed must be extinguished from consciousness and put out of reach,

put behind oneself. This is the experience of the abyss. Afterwards, one can begin the slow

process of acquiring the next evolutionary level.

What is experienced by the individual is also passed thru by the nation in its

development, as well the whole of humanity. The infant Jesus of the Matthew gospel went into

occultation in Egypt, so it is a common spiritual event. As such, so too the nation of Israel went

into occultation during the Babylonian captivity.

Now the classic symbol for this process of occultation is the astrological sign of Cancer.

Here there is a spiraling in towards a center-then a small gap-then a spiraling outwards

towards the periphery. For sure these two spirals represent the cosmic centripetal and

centrifugal forces that work towards a center like gravity and towards the periphery, like the

expanding galaxies in deep space. The secret however is in the center. These two spirals are

not one connected continuous line as some may think or as incorrectly drawn. In the center

where the two spirals meet there is a gap! This gap is the abyss and a certain JUMP must be

achieved to bridge this gap.

Jumps actually do occur in material evolution. The scientist Stephen Jay Gould has

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developed an entire evolutionary palenotology based upon his theory that biological evolution

proceeds by jumps, not by slow changes over long periods of time, in the Darwinian sense.

In nature we see the seed from the old plant being sown in the ground and in the

spring a new plant comes alive in birth. For the secular scientist, something material, however

small, must pass over from the old plant seed into the new plant. But this is not so, the old

plant and seed are entirely dissolved and dead to the world. The physical condition has

completely passed away, into the abyss, but the spiritual condition has remained over. It is this

retained spirit that jumps the gap between death and a new life in the plant. When one looks

at the seed with clairvoyant vision, one sees the tiny material seed and from it proceeds a long

comet like tail extending many lengths. Sort of like a picture of the brain and the spinal cord

attached as a long snake extending from out the skull. This tail is the spirit!

So too in all evolutionary processes. In the human, to pass from one condition of

consciousness, to another, it is the inner strength of will that jumps the gap. In transitions from

the mineral to plant, to animal, to human kingdoms, a gap must be overcome. It always the

spirit that bridges the gap, in both the macrocosm and microcosm. It is interesting that in the

ancient wisdom besides the symbol of the vortices of Cancer, the symbol of the ass and its

foal, stood for the process of jumping the gap. Very ancient symbols of the constellation of

Cancer were often represented by the ass and foal. There are also some very misunderstood

symbols of Jesus riding an ass.

THE MERGING OF TWO MYSTERY TRADITIONS

Now it is very important to understand that the Divine plan of the incarnation of Christ

within the genealological line of David could not have occurred without the captivity of the

Jewish nation in Babylon. It was here in the abyss of the occultation that two ancient mystery

streams of wisdom met and merged. The first stream was that of the Jewish mystery tradition

which espoused that the kingly Messiah would be born of the Kingly line of David. The second

stream was that of the ancient mystery wisdom of the Persians that within their Kingly line

of Zarathustra, a messiah would also be re-born.

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The ancient wisdom taught that a great avatar type soul had to be born of a certain

class, either of a priestly class or a kingly class, whichever predominated at the time. For

example, when the Gautama Buddha was about to incarnate, the wife queen of king

Suddhodana had a dream of a glorious white elephant descending from the sky to enter her

womb. The king’s dream interpreters said that the queen was to bear a son who would be

either a great king or great priest. Of course, the Buddha was sort of both, being a great

religious teacher born into a kingly family. The birth of this Buddha merged the two classes

of priest and king into one person.

As we now know from the extensive writings of the Dead Sea Scrolls of the Essenes,

as well the ancient Jewish book, THE TESTAMENTS OF THE TWELVE PATRIARCHS, the Jews

were expecting TWO messiahs, a kingly Messiah and a priestly Messiah, in two separate

persons. This is the story on one of those two messiahs, the Kingly Messiah, as revealed in the

Matthew gospel. (The Luke gospel tells of the birth of the Priestly Messiah.)

Years ago, I was reading the ANACALYPSIS, a book by the erudite 19 century masonicth

theosophist, Godfrey Higgins. In it he referred to the astronomical cycle of the NEROS, or more

correctly, the naros. It was a cycle of approximately 600 years derived from the ancient

Persians. Further spiritual research provided that it was the incarnational cycle of the great

Persian avatar, naros or more commonly, Zarathustra. This name was also recorded by the

ancient druids of Ireland by the name Zeradusht. Zarathustra was the single most advanced

initiate participating in the ancient mysteries. During his incarnations in ancient India, he

absorbed the ancient wisdom of the seven rishis. In his Persian initiations, he created the

Persian religion of Zoroastrian Mazdaism with the great books of the Zend-Avesta and the

hymns of the GATHAS. This is the religion of which king Cyrus speaks in the 15 degree withth

a reference to Ahura Mazda, the great spirit of the sun. During the Egyptian cycle, he taught

Hermes, who bestowed the mysteries of Osiris and Isis as well the many wisdom books of

Thoth. During the Jewish cycle, he was the teacher of Moses. When Moses fled Egypt after

killing a man, he met at a well the seven daughters of Jethro, one of whom he married. That

Moses married of the seven was a ruse for his initiation by Zarathustra, then incarnated as

Jethro.

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Zarathustra is well known in occultism as a recurring personalty like Melchizadek or

Elijah. When Nietzsche needed a personalty to espouse his philosophy of eternal recurrence

and his idea of the human superman, he chose Zarathustra, which were introduced in his

poem, Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

The name Zarathustra is two-fold. First, as the great initiate who incarnates every 600

years to renew the mystery wisdom and second, as a title, like the Israelite or King Arthur or

the Master of the lodge, appointed to the person who continues the tradition of his mysteries

during his excarnation. It is because of this two-fold practice of the ancient mysteries that our

university professors can never give a date certain of when a certain great initiate like

Zarathustra, or Hermes or Orpheus or Pythagorus or Dionysius the Aeropagite or King Arthur

was born or an age when he lived! Because these names appear as the Master of the Lodge

or mystery school over hundreds of years during a particular mystery cycle.

Now, a funny thing happened to the Jews on the way to Babylon. Zarathustra had

instituted a new mystery school in Babylon during the 70 year captivity. The name he used

during this incarnation was Zarathas. Pythagorus was there as well all the great initiates of the

Jewish mystery tradition, like Ezechiel and Daniel. Imaging the conversation between Daniel

telling Zarathas his visions of the future and Zarathas telling Daniel the story of the ancient

history of the world. It must have been quite a party.

In an old 13 century collection of stories preserved in a Syriac manuscript entitled,th

THE BOOK OF THE BEE, by a Nestorian bishop, was an ancient prophecy dating back to the

6 century B.C. connected with the destiny and mission Zarathustra. It says in part:th

“A child shall be conceived in the womb of a virgin, and shall be formed in her

members without any man approaching her. And He shall be like a tree with beautiful

foliage and laden with fruit....... and they will take Him and crucify Him upon a tree

and heaven and earth shall sit in mourning for His sake. He will go down to the depths

of the earth, and from the depths He will be exalted to the height; then He will come

with the armies of light and be born aloft upon white clouds; for He is a child conceived

by the word which establishes nature.

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When (his teacher) Gushnasp says to Him- (Zarathustra)- “ whence has this one, of

whom thou sayest these things, his power.?” Zaradosht ( Zarathustra) says to him:

“ he shall descend from my family; I am He and He is I; He is in me and I am in Him.

When the beginning of his coming appears, mighty signs will be seen in heaven and

his light shall surpass that of the sun. And when that star rises of which I have spoken,

let ambassadors bearing offerings be sent by you. He is the king of kings”

This quotation from the ancient book pretty much sums it all up. During the exchange

of mystery wisdom during the captivity, the Jewish initiates told Zarathustra that their kingly

Messiah would be born out the line of David. But they certainly did not know WHEN for their

mysteries had become corrupted by the occultation. Zarathustra told the Jewish initiates that

he will again incarnate in (around) 600 years and HIS body would become the vessel for the

incarnation of the Matthew Jesus. It was this incarnating Zarathustra described in the gospel

of St. Matthew whom the magi visited in a house bearing gifts after following a star that

guided them to Bethlehem in full accord with the prophecy of THE BOOK OF THE BEE .

This esoteric mystery wisdom resulting from the merging of the two mystery streams

during the captivity was passed on in secrecy to the Essenes at Qumran located by the Dead

Sea. This was the true priesthood dedicated to the victory of the Sons of Light and using a true

solar calendar. They collected and wrote down their preserved mystery wisdom in the Dead

Sea Scrolls. The other exoteric priest hoods of the Pharisees and Sadducees had their own

preserved mystery wisdom, but certainly not of the quality of that passed to the Essenes. For

the Essenes had the calculations of the 600 year cycle of the Persian naros, the Zarathustra,

and could predict exactly WHEN the kingly Messiah would come and prepare the mystery

schools for the great event.

King Darius was of course informed of the alliance made between the Jews and

Persians and graciously liberated the Jews to return and rebuild their temple under the

guidance of Zerubbabel. King Darius was a major player in this drama and one must also

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wonder why history wrote itself out this way to have the Persian empire restored in all its

splendor, wisdom and glory.

Respectively submitted,

By: Stephen Cosgrove

February 25, 2012

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